


Io Station, the Full Story

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [164]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Attempted Murder, Backstory, Canon Compliant, EarthForce, Episode: s02e06 Spider in the Web, Fix-It, Gen, Ivanova is a dick, Politics, Psi Cops, Psi Corps, Sheridan was probably involved but I can't prove it, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23238238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: The full story of theincident on Io station- you know, the attempted murder that Susan Ivanova got away with.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!
Series: Behind the Gloves [164]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/677654
Kudos: 4





	Io Station, the Full Story

**Author's Note:**

> New to _Behind the Gloves_? What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590). What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> In _A Spider in the Web_ , Sheridan and Ivanova have the following snippet of conversation:
> 
> Ivanova: You know how I feel about telepaths.  
> Sheridan: Do I ever! You threw one out of a third-story window on lo.  
> Ivanova: There was a pool below the window.  
> Sheridan: I'll assume you knew that.
> 
> This dialogue is played as "comedy" - it is obvious that Ivanova's career did not suffer in the slightest because of this incident.
> 
> Attempted murder of telepaths, by normals, is so common, so _mundane_ (pun intended) that not only do normals treat it as a joke, the show _itself_ treats it as a joke. She's just so _hot-headed!_ She really can't help it!
> 
> Sheridan and Ivanova served together on Io station, when she joined EarthForce after the Earth-Minbari War. (See _Points of Departure_.) Sheridan may or may not have been her superior officer when the incident took place. I wrote the story below assuming he was not directly involved in the cover-up, but this may be over-generous. I just don't have enough information to know for sure.
> 
> What we do know for sure is that no one (including Sheridan) considered this conduct unbecoming an officer. No charges were pressed. Ivanova faced no court martial. And though the Corps usually gets involved when a telepath is attacked, for some reason, they were unable to prosecute the matter, either.
> 
> The precise date of her assault on the unnamed telepath is not given in canon.
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!

2134

_Senator Lee Crawford went to a small cabinet and withdrew an earthenware bottle, poured an amber fluid into a small crystal flute. “So you oversaw telepaths in the courtroom.”_

_“I did.”_

_“Well, tell me this. Some of my colleagues have been pushing to broaden the admissibility of teep testimony. What’s your opinion?”_

_“My opinion is that things are best as they stand.”_

_Lee nodded. “Well, at least you have an opinion. Now explain it.”_

_“Spectral evidence.”_

_“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, son.”_

_“In the late seventeenth century, in North America, in Salem, Massachusetts, a number of people were tried and many hung for witchcraft. The court admitted testimony of spectral evidence– allegations that the accused had appeared in ghostly form to those they afflicted. One of the men involved – Cotton Mather – argued persuasively against the admissibility of such evidence. After all, the testimony wasn’t verifiable – the witnesses could lie for any number of reasons, accusing innocent people. Despite Mather’s objections, the testimony was admitted, and twenty-one people were executed. Later, there was a backlash, a big one. I think telepath testimony is comparable. It’s good for establishing the possibility of guilt, but shouldn’t be admitted without corroborating physical or overwhelming circumstantial evidence.”_

_Lee cocked his head. “They teach you that in law school?”_

_“No. I'm something of a history buff.”_

_“Write that up for me. It’ll sound good on the floor. Can you think of other historical precedents?”_

_“Yes. In Nigeria, in 2002-”_

_“Just write it up.”_

_Kevin was good to his word. After his short tour of Teeptown with Tom Nguyen, he went home and typed up a draft, and the next morning he delivered it to the senator. Lee looked it over, mumbling to himself._

_“This is pretty good,” he said. “But it needs more... scandal.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“You’ve got the history and the law, son, but the public needs a scandal. They don’t vote with their heads, they vote with their hearts. With their intestines, even. They don’t turn out unless someone, or somethin’, scares the hell out of them. That’s telepaths. You follow?”_

_“I’m not certain I do, sir,” Kevin lied._

_“The public needs a metaphor, son, somethin’ they can see and feel. They don’t need a history lesson from some egghead Harvard lawyer.” He grabbed a pen and made some comments in the margins. “Everybody’s scared of being undressed in public, right?” He slapped the paper with his pen. “Well, that’s why telepaths all wear them badges and gloves, so everyone knows who they are. And that’s why we keep ‘em off juries.” He nodded. “And everyone’s scared of bein’ violated, am’i’rite? So we tell ‘em that teeps are peepin’ toms. We make scans illegal without consent. It’s all about sex, kid.”_

_Kevin nodded._

_“My colleagues, see, they’re tryin’ to change the rules. They’re talkin’ about permittin’ the police... our Authority agents that is, to get a warrant to scan suspects, without consent. They’re sellin’ it to the public in terms of lawful search and seizure, because everyone knows about that. The police get a warrant, they search your home. But what do we tell ‘em?”_

_“Rape?”_

_“Rape, trespass, violatin’ privacy, you name it. Get your head out of a law textbook and read the tabloids, son! My colleagues wanna broaden the court rules and let teeps testify whether there’s corroboratin’ evidence or not. What do we call it?”_

_Kevin thought for a moment. “A witch-hunt against innocent normals.”_

_“Now you’re catchin’ on! We tell ‘em it’s Salem, or Nigeria, or whatever you’ve got here. These guys are gettin’ on the news tellin’ voters it’s not fair that normals can testify in court to what we saw or heard, but teeps, see, they’ve got special senses. Why can’t they testify about surface thoughts, or even what they found in consensual scans? We say...”_

_“...that it’s spectral evidence. Unless there’s strong corroborating physical evidence, there’s no way to verify the testimony without bringing in another teep, and that teep also has to work for the same Authority. What if they’re in cahoots? We couldn’t stop the witch-hunt. Then we point out that the MRA is a regulatory agency under the executive branch... it's a separate branch of government, so letting teeps into the courtroom except in very special circumstances... say, to let them determine guilt or innocence, would violate the EA Constitution.”_

_Lee rolled his eyes. “Step away from the law, son. Fear. Go back to the fear.”_

_“We say that the current rules provide checks and balances, and protect the public from unscrupulous telepaths. We’ve always had these rules and they’ve always worked. We warn the public about a slippery slope... once we let teeps into our justice system, the good ones as well as the bad, down we’ll all go. We’ll lose control of the government. No doubt many teeps are good, but what about the bad ones? They’ll grab power, starting with the courts, and before we know it, teeps will control everything.”_

_“[One step removed from tyranny](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100343),” Lee said, with a triumphant smile. He tossed the pages over his desk, back at Kevin. “Write that up. I’ll deliver the speech this afternoon.”_

*****

2249

Commander Eli “Jammer” Sherman, Io station, scowled across his desk and dropped the digital reader with a loud “clack.”

“What’s this, Ensign?” the old man barked at the young brown-haired woman standing in front of him, with a muscular build and a single stud earring in one ear.[1] Commander Sherman should have been long past retirement – and once, he had been – but after the heavy casualties Earth suffered in the war with the Minbari, EarthForce had brought him back to active duty to run the Io station until a permanent replacement could be found. The station, miraculously, had survived the Earth-Minbari War, with only its communications and defenses disabled.[2] A spinning ring of shiny metal against the massive backdrop of Jupiter,[3] Io Station was second in size (in the Sol system) only to the Earth Alliance colony of Mars,[4] with a resident population of 1.7 million people.[5] Due to its proximity to the Io transfer point, the station served as a strategic, even vital EarthForce base.[6] The station regularly handled both military and civilian traffic, both domestic and out-of-system, especially for ships too small to have their own jump engines.[7]

Sherman might have been old-school, but the brass knew he could be trusted to keep the place running smoothly, and to oversee the reconstruction of the station's communications and defense capabilities, one of EarthForce's highest priorities.[8]

“You haven’t been here more than a month, Ensign,” he said, “and now security tells me you pushed a telepath out a third story window. MedLab says he’s pretty banged up.”

“Y-yes, sir. He made a comment about my mother.”

Commander Sherman signed and leaned back in his faux-leather chair. “What are you, some hot shit? I don’t care what he said about your mother, Ensign, and I don’t even wanna know. I just wanna know that it won’t happen again. I don’t like them any more than you do, but EarthForce can’t have officers beating up civilians, even if they _are_ telepaths.”

“Sir.”

“I don’t need any hot-heads under my command, either. None of that shit flies on my station, so you take note. No bar fights, no ‘taking it outside,’ and no pushing anybody out a window. That’s an EarthForce uniform you’re wearing, Ensign, and I expect you to comport yourself with all the self-control of an EarthForce officer. Am I clear?”

“Sir.”

“I’m putting a note in your file. If this happens again, there will be serious consequences.”

“Yes, sir. Understood.” She hesitated, nervous. “The Corps won’t be looking into this, will they, sir?”

He picked up his device again, and tapped a few keys. “Eh. Don’t worry about them. This is my station, not theirs. If they come around, I’ll cover for you. Just don’t ever do it again. Dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The young woman left his office, breathing an audible sigh of relief.

“Threw a telepath out a window… hot damn.” He laughed to himself, thinking about how, at her age, in her shoes, he might have done the same thing. “Little mindfuckers… Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.”

*****

“Ah, good, Ms. Khan. Have a seat.”

Jillian looked around the MarsDome station chief’s spacious office, a rare luxury for the red planet. The walls were decorated with oil paintings of the French countryside, a stark contrast to the view of urban Mars from out his windows.

“I’ve got an assignment for you,” Aubrey Pierre-Louis began, fixing Jillian with dark eyes from under his bushy grey eyebrows. “All the senior Psi Cops are on assignment at the moment, and it’s about time you got some field experience. You won’t get promoted sitting behind a desk.”

She nodded, trying not to show her excitement at a real field assignment.

“We got a call from Io station,” he said flatly. “A young business teep, Mark Morozov, had some sort of accident. His wife says he was pushed out a window by a mundane. She says it’s attempted murder.”

“And station security? What do they say?”

“They say nothing. His wife, Natalya Balabanova, called the Corps and filed the report.” The chief cocked his head at the young officer. “And that gives you some idea of the sort of people you’ll be dealing with over there. Some EarthForce commanders cooperate with the Corps. Some… don’t.”

"If they don't cooperate, sir, what do I do? How do I investigate?"

"Just do the best you can." He handed her a digital device. “There’s your briefing. Pack your bags, you’re leaving in two hours.”

Jillian went back to the station barracks and packed for a two day trip. Just as on Earth, only Psi Cops of lieutenant rank or higher lived in their own quarters. Most Psi Cops spent at least six years before earning that promotion.

She read the briefing on the commercial flight to Io. Mark’s wife, also a business teep, had been working a separate negotiation at the time of the incident. She reported that her husband had been brought to MedLab unconscious, with a skull fracture and spinal injury, and covered in blood from smashed glass, but that she’d nonetheless been able to do a quick scan before the medical team rushed him into surgery.

“A young woman in an EarthForce uniform attacked him,” she’d said. “That’s all I got.”

Jillian watched out the porthole as Io station grew from a tiny black dot against the backdrop of Jupiter into a spinning ring of shiny metal. Somehow the station had survived the war. Perhaps, Jillian suspected grimly, the Minbari had intended to come back and finish the job, once Earth itself had been annihilated.

Either way, EarthForce had soon repaired the station's communication and defense capabilities, and rebuilt its strategic forces at the Io transfer point. Indeed, the Io project had been one of the military’s highest priorities. The Corps had requested a field office on the upgraded station, to serve the local telepath population, but EarthDome was dragging its feet.

Several hundred telepaths lived on the station full-time, with others were stationed there on short assignments, mostly commercial. Mark Morozov and his wife were regular inhabitants. Mark’s last assignment, according to Natalya, had been to monitor a deal between EarthForce and some civilian contractors.

“It was routine,” she had told the Corps. “I can’t think of any reason for anyone in EarthForce to want him dead.”

 _Mundanes_ , Jillian thought. No telepath was ever entirely safe around them.

When the transport docked, she passed through customs with minimal hassle – just a few dirty looks from the customs officials, and curses muttered under their breath – sought out Natalya. Jillian decided it was best to avoid talking to station security for as long as possible, and only approach them with something concrete. If they hadn’t reported the attack to the Corps, and they hadn't returned calls from the Mars precinct, they were either incompetent or corrupt, and either way, they wouldn’t be of much help.

 _“Slava bogu!_ ” the young woman exclaimed when she answered the door, eyes red and puffy from crying. She had dark curly hair and deep brown eyes. “Thank God you’re here. I just don’t know what to do with myself. Please, come in.” She offered Jillian some tea. The apartment was spacious, with a sitting room, kitchenette, two bedrooms and even private toilet. Eight hundred square feet, perhaps? Business telepaths on Io did well, it seemed. Jillian thought about her cot in the MarsDome precinct bunk. An apartment this size would cost a small fortune on Mars. Even if Jillian lived long enough to make lieutenant, she still wouldn’t get a bedroom much larger than an Earth closet.

She sat, sipping her tea, waiting for the young woman to compose herself. There was no need to speak aloud.

"They won't let me see him!" Natalya exclaimed at last.

Jillian nodded. "I heard."

Natalya repeated everything she'd said in her report, mainly for the comfort of saying it in person, not because she thought the Psi Cop didn't know. She then consented to a scan, and though Jillian got a hazy image of the woman who had attacked Mark, she didn’t learn very much more about the attack. She did learn, however, that Natalya and Mark were expecting their first child.

Natalya provided Jillian with a list of clients for whom Mark had recently monitored deals, though she wasn’t certain the list was complete.

“And the doctors won’t let me in to see him,” Natalya repeated. “They told me he’s not well enough to see visitors, but I don’t believe them. They don’t want me to scan him again. I don’t know what they’re covering up.”

"You said the negotiation was above board."

“Completely!” Natalya assured the Psi Cop. “Mark and I are strictly above board, all the way. We never break rules, _any_ rules. Please, help him. Help me. We don’t deserve this!”

Jillian promised she would do her very best, and headed for MedLab. She would need to get a clean scan of Mark himself.

“No visitors,” the chief medical officer said with a voice hard as iron, and a vicious stare. “Mr. Morozov is recovering from spinal surgery and cannot be disturbed.”

“This is a criminal investigation, Dr. Henwood,” Jillian began, trying to seem as intimidating as possible. How could she let herself be intimidated by a mundane doctor? “I am a cop," she said, standing up taller and looking him in the eye, "your patient is under my jurisdiction, and he was assaulted. I need to see Mr. Morozov immediately.”

“Absolutely not. He’s not even conscious.”

Jillian got the whiff of a lie. “Doesn’t matter. I can scan him anyway.”

“I won’t allow it. Too dangerous.”

“You don’t have that authority, doctor,” Jillian snapped. “This case is under Psi Corps jurisdiction. Do I need to cite you chapter and verse? Now kindly step aside so we can get this over with.”

“No, you will leave my MedLab, or I will call security and have you removed for trespass and disrupting the orderly operation of my hospital!”

They argued some more until the doctor paged for security, but Jillian left before the officers showed up. She couldn’t conduct her investigation from the station brig.

*****

_“Now, some of my esteemed colleagues here in the Senate, they wanna change the rules let MRA agents scan normals, even without permission. They tell the citizens there’ll be no abuse because the MRA has to get a warrant, from by a judge.” He laughed. “But let’s leave that aside for the moment. What they’re really sayin’, underneath all this sugar coatin’ about warrants and such, is that they wanna give the green light to telepath police to scan you or me, even without consent._

_“Oh! They deny it, they say the warrant only allows for a very narrow scan, just to look for evidence of that one crime! Really?” He laughed. “Who really believes that bullshit?” He pointed at several of his colleagues. “You, Senator Gallo? You, Senator Vinogradov? Let’s be rational for a moment, senators. We all know telepaths can’t be trusted. That’s why we have the MRA in the first place! We all know what would happen if we let them start scannin’ us without consent, whatever story they tell a judge to get a warrant. You know, I know, every thinkin’ person knows that once they get in there, they’re goin’ to start doin’ whatever they want to us.”_

_He looked around the Senate chamber, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Be honest. If someone says ‘no peekin'!’, doncha all wanna peek?”_

*****

Jillian discovered to her dismay that of the people on Natalya’s potential witness list hadn’t witnessed the attack. All of Mark’s former clients told Jillian they knew nothing, except perhaps to have heard about in passing, and Jillian could feel they were all telling her the truth. There were dozens of witnesses to the fall itself – many station residents and personnel had seen Mark fall three stories into the small pool (and fountain) in the main plaza below, but none could say whether he had been pushed. They remembered screaming and blood, water and broken glass. Several were still traumatized from witnessing the incident.

One of the witnesses took her back to the plaza where the incident occurred. Small shops ringed the plaza on the ground floor, while two stories of office windows overlooked the plaza from above. The witness pointed up at the broken glass (now covered with a tarp) above.

"He fell from there," she said.

"Did he fall forwards? Backwards?"

She didn't remember.

The manager of FinCorp Construction was especially distraught over the whole affair. His company had a long-standing relationship with EarthForce, he told Jillian, and he was very concerned that this incident would interfere with his company's future work.

“We've done a lot of jobs on this station since the war,” he said. “We built those windows. I can tell you exactly the type of glass in them, how thick it is, and how much force it takes to break. No one falls out by accident. Either that telepath intentionally threw himself through the glass, or someone pushed him.” The manager shook his head and let out a long sigh. “If it was up to me,” he told her frankly, “I’d give you permission to scan each of my employees. You think I want someone on my staff who’d toss a telepath out a window? I don’t need that kind of trouble. But I don’t have that authority, and most of my employees probably won’t consent."

"We don't think it was one of your employees who did it," Jillian told him.

"Oh thank God, because we'd be finished if the Corps ever blacklisted us."

"We got a scan of the victim," Jillian said, unsure whether she should be offering this information, but trying to assuage the man's fears. "He believes someone in EarthForce pushed him."

The manager nodded. "Well, good luck. I wish I could be of more help. If I hear anything about it on my end, if it was any of my employees, I’ll call the Corps right away.”

He gave Jillian the names of the company reps who had been at the meeting. As he had predicted, none consented to a scan, but all were willing to speak to her and answer questions.

“When we left the room,” said the first man, a fifty-something-year-old engineer, “the telepath was chatting with EarthForce. I have no idea what they were saying. I wasn't listening - I was just packing up my own materials. The meeting was over and the the rest of us were going to lunch. We didn’t hear about the… accident until later.”

“Who was at the table from EarthForce?”

“Three officers… two senior folks and one young ensign. I’ll find the names for you.”

The other FinCorp reps each confirmed the three names, of two men and a woman, and they all wished Jillian the best of luck.

*****

Jillian tried to locate the three EarthForce officers, but no one from EarthForce would tell her where they were.

“He’s indisposed.”

“He’s gone off station on patrol.”

“I’ll page her.”

All lies. Jillian wanted to call them on it, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Even though she hadn’t scanned anyone – she didn’t need to scan to smell bullshit – the normals could easily accuse her of an illegal scan and throw her in the brig. There would be no way she could clear her name until she got back to Mars and her colleagues scanned her. Meanwhile, what would she have accomplished?

She went back to her guest quarters – private quarters – fuming. EarthForce didn’t give a damn that the Corps had legal jurisdiction over the case – at least, technically the Corps did. The station personnel were collectively going to give her as hard a time as they could. In the end, even with her badge and nominal authority, she was just one person, one despised telepath, in a whole goddamn EarthForce _base_ , the second biggest off-world base in the solar system. She was spitting in the wind.

She asked station security for their file on the incident, and all they gave her was a short document describing the emergency medical response to Mr. Morozov’s fall.

“But what about the investigation into the fall itself? Didn’t anyone look into that?”

“Sorry, Ms. Khan, that’s all there is.”

Another lie.

“You’re all that incompetent? Really? This is a station of almost 1.7 million people. Someone just fell out a third story window into the plaza below, and almost died. You didn’t investigate how this happened? You didn’t interview the EarthForce officers who were there when he fell?”

“That’s all we have, Ms. Khan, I’m sorry.”

“What’s the problem, you don’t have the resources to investigate an attempted murder when it’s just a lousy teep?”

“I never said any such thing, Ms. Khan. I’m offended that you think I–”

“Then why wasn’t there an investigation?”

"There was. That's it."

“Why didn’t anyone call the Corps when this happened? You obviously knew about it, because you sent medics to the scene. Didn’t anyone see the victim was wearing a Psi Corps badge and black leather gloves?”

“We did call the Corps.”

“You did? Who did you speak to, when you called the Corps?”

“I didn’t call personally… I just know someone did.”

Round and round she went, getting nowhere. The officers who responded to the fall were all permanently “indisposed,” and the people Jillian spoke with either knew nothing, or pretended they knew nothing. Station security even had the audacity to claim there was no surveillance video.

Spitting in the wind.

Jillian bought herself dinner in the station’s main food court, and found herself seated at a table next to a father with two small children.

"She's eating with gloves!" a little girl exclaimed, pointing.

Jillian could fear a spike of fear from the father, as he tried not to look at her, while explaining to his children "what telepaths were," as if she wasn't sitting right there, able to hear every word.

She ate hastily and went back to MedLab, hoping Dr. Henwood had gone off duty for the night.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone see Mr. Morozov,” the junior physician told her. “Commander’s orders.”

“Commander Sherman?” asked Jillian. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“Uh… nothing. I didn’t mean that. I meant that the patient isn’t well enough to have visitors. Even family can’t come in here.”

“Look here,” Jillian told the young man flatly. “I’m getting tired of all your little games. I’ll make it really simple – either you let me in to see the patient, right now, or I’ll have you charged with interfering with a criminal investigation and obstructing justice.” Jillian wasn’t entirely sure how she could arrest him, since she was on the station alone, and security would probably throw _her_ in the brig if she tried, but it was worth a good bluff. “This case is under Psi Corps jurisdiction. I can have a full bloodhound team down here in two hours if you push me, and it won’t be pretty.”

The young doctor looked around nervously, as if caged. He thought about calling Dr. Henwood and waking him up, but he hesitated.

Jillian opened her tel-phone and pretended to make a call. “This is Ms. Khan. I’m going to need that bloodhound unit after all. Yes yes, I’m still here on Io station…”

“Wait!” shouted the young doctor. “You can see him, but only for a few minutes. And don’t tell anyone I let you in there.”

Jillian nodded. “Hang on, belay that order… I’ll call you back.” She clicked the phone shut and followed the young man into a back room.

Finally.

Mark Morozov lay on a cot, bandages and regen packs all over his body. He wore nothing but a medical jersey. The doctors, Jillian noted, hadn’t even given him gloves. This was indecent.

“I don’t know if he’s awake,” the young doctor was saying. “I’m supposed to tell you he’s not conscious, but I don’t really know. We’ve never had a case like this before.”

“Like what? A spinal injury?”

“No, I mean… like this.”

_Mr. Morozov?_

Mark slowly opened his eyes, and took in the room around him. His gaze fell on Jillian’s MetaPol badge.

 _You’re from the Corps,_ he cast, with mix of surprise and relief.

_Yes. I’m here to find out what happened to you._

_Tell them I’m too weak to speak aloud. Go on._

“It seems you were right,” Jillian said carefully. “He is in very weak condition. I’m going to have to conduct my investigation telepathically. Don’t worry, this will make things even faster. I’ll be out of here in no time.”

The young doctor nervously glanced at the door, and back again.

Jillian took off one of her gloves and carefully placed her fingertips on the man’s face. _I won’t go too far. Just show me what happened._

 _We concluded the meeting,_ he said. _Everything was as it should be. FinCorp left, and it was just me and EarthForce in the room. I got talking to a young officer… the woman. The Russian._

_Susan Ivanova?_

_Yes, that was her name. We were chatting in Russian. Typical stuff, just being friendly. We’re both from St. Petersberg, it turns out. I asked about her childhood, and noticed that her mother was a telepath. But the Ensign was so nervous. It didn’t make sense. I told her that usually, people who are uncomfortable around telepaths are those who’ve never met one before. I asked her why she was so uncomfortable around me, given that her own mother was a telepath._

_And?_

_And? That’s it! The bitch flew into a rage. Kakaya suka! She tried to kill me! She grabbed me by the shirt, lifted me right up and pushed me through the window, cursing me out! I screamed and fell, hit the bottom and woke up here._

As he ‘cast, Jillian could see the incident from his eyes. The young EarthForce officer had gone from cagey to homicidal in the span of only a few seconds. In Russian, she’d said something about ripping his head off and pissing down his throat, and something about hating Psi Corps.

Everything had happened suddenly and with no warning. Jillian could find no clue as to why she’d attacked him. Mark hadn’t said anything to her but typical friendly small talk, trying to find things in common. There was nothing Jillian could see that could be construed as an insult, no matter how benign.

When the news covered assaults on telepaths, Jillian knew, they usually focused perpetrators who were habitual criminals, vagrants, religious fanatics, or people with long histories of mental illness. ISN painted a picture of attacks emanating from the fringes of society, all committed by normals who didn’t have “respectable” careers, or social status. But it wasn’t the whole story. Attacks could come from anyone, anywhere, at any time.

 _That’s all I remember,_ Mark ‘cast. _If you scan me more deeply, you’ll see._

_Do you think the other EarthForce officers saw the attack?_

He thought for a moment. _Yes, they probably saw. But we were talking in Russian. They don’t know what we were saying._

Jillian considered this.

_And here in MedLab… the doctors won’t talk to me, but I feel them thinking I may never walk again. Ms. Khan, please. I have a wife. She's pregnant. Natasha and I were planning to make a life here on Io. Where is my wife? Why won’t they let me see her?_

_Your wife is fine. I’ve spoken with her. She wants to see you, too._

_Please, please, let me see my wife!_

_I’ll do what I can,_ she told the young man, and with a curt nod to the doctor, left MedLab.

How ironic, she mused, that fully half of the telepath population of the EA was employed serving normals, using their senses to detect lies, being _convenient_ , but the moment a telepath became _inconvenient_ – like Mr. Morozov – the tables turned, and the very senses that were once so valuable now posed a threat, and could cost a man life or limb.

As public service announcements for the Corps so oft repeated, “We’re everywhere, for your convenience.”

 _For your convenience, indeed,_ Jillian thought. We're your convenient scapegoats.

*****

_“Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, this bill isn’t about searchin’ a house. Hell, this isn’t even a strip search we’re talkin’ about, or even an invasive body cavity search." Lee made a face of disgust. "This is far, far worse. It’s our very minds they’re talkin’ about. It’s tyranny of the most intimate sort. This bill opens the door to nothin’ less than state-sanctioned mind-rape!_

_“Take a moment, ladies and gentlemen – I promise y’all there are no teeps present – and think of a secret. Maybe y’all’ve lusted after someone. Maybe y’all cheated on a test, once or twice, or on your spouse! Doesn’t matter. Think about that. Now think of your loved ones. Do you really want the telepath police to have access to that? They’ll know everythin’ from what you had for dinner last week to what you did in bed with your wife last night! Nothin’, absolutely nothin’, will be sacred._

_“My colleagues, bless their hearts, for all their good intentions, don’t seem to understand why we have the MRA in the first place. They think it’s fine and dandy for telepath police to go scannin’ suspects, and for teeps to go testifyin’ about what they saw other people thinkin’. To hell with Constitution and separation of powers, right? And to hell with the EA while we’re at it._

_“Go on, open the gates of Troy! Let in that horse! Who can tell if these telepaths are followin’ the warrants? Not you, Senator Qureshi–” he pointed to a colleague, “–you won’t be able to feel what they’re lookin’ at, or, God forbid, changin’ in yer head. Only another telepath can tell you that, and y’all gonna let another teep in your head to catch the first one? And a third to catch the second? Where does it end?”_

_Privately, he’d been even more blunt to his colleagues. Everyone in the Senate had something to hide, he knew. One by one, he'd cornered his colleagues when no one could hear, and reminded them that if this bill were to pass, their…, um, enemies would find out things about them._

_“Now," he told each of them, in private, wrapping his arm over their shoulders, "I’m sure you’ve got a thing or two in there that you don’t want Uncle Lee to know, hm? Or that you don't want in the papers? If you vote for this bill, just keep in mind the consequences. You may be signin’ the end of your career, or even sendin’ yerself to prison.”_ _He grinned, he winked, he slapped them on the back, and one by one, they withdrew support for the bill. Everyone knew that "Uncle Lee" controlled the MRA. They knew he had telepaths who worked just for him, and that ever since the start of the MRA, he would use them to dig up dirt on his opponents and destroy them._[9]

_But in public, he was always the jovial Uncle Lee, Hero of the Grissom Colony and Teep Savior, always out to safeguard the good citizens of Earth from the menace of telepath tyranny._

_“My colleagues say there’s nothin’ to worry about,” he told the chamber and the cameras, “because most MRA agents are good. And I don’t doubt we have some good men and women workin’ for us. But that doesn’t mean we throw away the rules that keep us safe, the rules that protect all normals, the guilty and the innocent, from invasions of our privacy. Together, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, we’ve kept the public safe from telepaths for a generation. Why fix what ain’t broke? Don’t y’all believe in the principles of due process? I sure as hell still do. If teeps wanna bring evidence into court, they have to play by the same rules as everyone else. They need hard, physical, corroboratin’ evidence.”  
_

_Crawford’s people flooded the airwaves with ads against the bill._

_Ominous music played, and a pretty young woman screamed for mercy as a scary-looking MRA agent scanned her. Images flashed across the screen of all the embarrassing or sexual memories he'd supposedly found in her head._

_“You have the right to say no,” the announcer voice boomed. “But Bill EA1888 will take that right away from you and from your loved ones. Call your Senator. Act now, before it’s too late.”_

_The public took the bait and panicked. The bill died in the Judiciary Committee, and the issue was never raised again._

*****

Jillian stayed up late trying to find files on Ensign Ivanova, but there wasn’t much to find. The young soldier had just received her commission, and Io was her first assignment. She didn’t have any public disciplinary record. Jillian called the Corps to find out what they knew, but there wasn’t much there, either.

The officer's mother, Sophie, was discovered by the Corps in 2236 and chosen to go on sleepers rather than join the Corps. She had committed suicide ten years later. Susan, like her father and older brother, had both tested negative for telepathy.

“Are you sure she’s not a P1? Someone we’re monitoring? Because then perhaps she could have tried to kill Mr. Morozov to keep it from her superiors. You know how edgy they get about teeps in the military.”

“Negative. She’s not on the monitor list. She’s under a P1, a latent at most. We’ve got a lot of old files on her mom, but that’s it.” The woman on the other end of the call shrugged.

“I suppose that makes sense. If she had a rating, her superiors would already have to know. It would have come up in the background check when she tried to join EarthForce.”

"Mr. Morozov said he'd mentioned her mother. Maybe she didn't want her superiors to know her mother had been a telepath?"

Another shrug. "It's anyone's guess."

No motive. Jillian cursed. This wasn’t going well.

What if there was no motive? What if it was random?

“As I said,” the woman from the records department continued, “all we have for her is the routine tests in school, all negative. Her mom moved the girl around a lot, probably thinking she was beating the tests. But I’m telling you, there was nothing to beat. She’s not even a P1.”

“So her mother was paranoid?”

Another shrug. “Do you want me to go through all her mom’s old files? That’ll take a while.”

“No. Mr. Morozov said when Ensign Ivanova attacked him, she said something about hating the Corps. Do you see anything in her file that would explain that?”

“She’s a mundane. They need a reason to hate us?”

Jillian thanked the woman at the records department, and first thing in the morning, she paid a visit to the station commander.

“I’m sorry, he’s indisposed,” his personal assistant told her.

“You don’t understand,” Jillian snapped. “There’s been an assault on one of my people, an attempted murder in fact, and it was an EarthForce officer who did it. I know exactly who. But somehow, every time I try to question her, she’s nowhere to be found. No one will tell me where she’s assigned on the station, and no one will tell me where she lives. I’m chasing a ghost. Now, either I speak to the commander this morning, and he finds me this officer so I can ask her some questions, or I’ll have no choice but to write in my report to the Corps that Commander Sherman has been interfering with a criminal investigation, or even aiding and abetting by covering up the crime. And the next Psi Cop who shows up won’t be as nice as me.”

The assistant grumbled and left the room. Two hours later, Jillian finally got into the commander’s office.

“Ensign Ivanova isn’t speaking with you or with anyone else from the Psi Corps,” he said flatly, sitting smugly behind his desk. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your so-called ‘jurisdiction’ or your witch-hunt against my officers. This is my station, plain and simple. Any allegations of misconduct in EarthForce are handled internally.”

“Attempted murder of a telepath is Psi Corps jurisdiction.”

“Attempted murder? Is that the charge? Bullshit.”

“I scanned the victim. He knows who pushed him out that window.”

“Is that all you’ve got? A scan, and nothing to back it up? That’s worth a jug of spit. Play this out, little miss Psi Cop. A telepath takes the stand and says that one of my soldiers pushed him. Everyone else - everyone who was there - says otherwise. You've got a scan? You've got nothing to back it up - no video, no witnesses. It's inadmissible, and no one would believe you anyway. You're finished. Now get your ass off my station.”

“I’m writing you up for interfering in a criminal investigation, and covering up a crime.”

He laughed.

“You go and do that," he scoffed. "You think at my age, I give a damn?”

*****

Jillian sat with her small suitcase at one of the station’s terminals, waiting for her transport back to Mars. She’d failed, completely.

Louis-Pierre had told her the Corps was dropping the case.

“But Mr. Morozov was almost killed! He may never walk again! You’re just going to let this mundane scum get away with it?”

“Ms. Khan, the Corps doesn’t have infinite resources. We could keep fighting EarthForce, or we could use the same money to relocate the family, and to cover Mr. Morozov’s medical expenses and rehabilitation.”

“But she–”

“We can’t win ‘em all, Jillian. Remember that.”

She squirmed inside to hear him refer to her by her given name.

_The Corps is Mother and Father._

They had a duty to use their resources to best look after their own. Maybe he was right, even if it wasn’t fair. Maybe it was the best they could do.

 _A senior Psi Cop would have kicked their asses_ , she mused darkly. _Someone like Mr. Bester could've handled them, for sure._

Now in the terminal waiting for her flight, Jillian watched ISN on the screens above. A public service announcement played between segments, one of the usual sorts trying to get normals to trust the Corps. A young mundane girl lay unconscious in a hospital bed, and the doctors had called in a telepath to scan her and find the assailant. The telepath gave a description to the normal police, who shook her gloved hand and thanked her with overflowing gratitude.

“We’ll nab that guy and put him behind bars,” the normal cop said. “All because of you.”

The telepath smiled and looked into the camera. “Don’t thank me, thank the Psi Corps! The Psi Corps is here to make your lives better. We’re everywhere, for your convenience.”

[1] _In the Beginning_ (movie). She gives one earring to her brother before he leaves for the EAS Lexington, and after he dies, henceforth only wears one.

[2] JMS interview, 2/16/94 (unavailable online)

[3] _Id._

[4] _Id._

[5] Mars has two million people in 2261, as given in _The Exercise of Vital Powers_. Io station is second in size to Mars colony, so if we assume that Mars' population has remained relatively constant over those twelve years, Io Station can reasonably have a population of 1.7 million.

[6] JMS interview, 2/16/94 (unavailable online)

[7] _Id._

[8] _Id._

[9] _See Dark Genesis_ , p. 42-43 (he threatens to reveal to the public that Senator Vladmir [sic?] Tokash is has tested positive for the telepath gene, thus forcing him to turn over to Crawford the names of everyone he knows who is a telepath, especially of any telepaths who work for him); p. 61-64 (he gets Senator Menshikov to do what he wants by threatening to reveal that Menshikov raped a thirteen-year-old girl, got her pregnant, and had her murdered).

**Author's Note:**

> Dark Genesis' chapter ends at the line, "Just write it up." Everything after that point is mine.


End file.
